源自於 工商,商周,BBC,經濟,Upaper 的英文筆記

When multitudes of decisions need tobe make, delegate. Seek passionate peopleto work for you. Budget your time careful-ly, and keep a culture of innovation alivewithin your company. These are the secrets to Microsoft CEOSteve Ballmer's success, as revealed ina series of short video interviews for theWall Street Journal's Lessons in Leader-ship guide, where he discusses his viewson time management, making decisions,driving innovation, and more. While Mr. Ballmer, who has been at thehelm of Microsoft since 2000, is known forhis eccentric personality and episodes ofexcitable public behavior, he gives soundand structured advice to business leadersabout how he approaches his work at Mi-crosoft. He says that there's a stereotype thatinnovation happens at a rapid fire pace,but he doesn't agree - he thinks that com-panies should invest in innovation over along period of time. "Hardly anything inthe tech industry went from rags to richesovernight," he explains. And while talk-ing about and emphasizing a culture ofinnovation is crucial for a company's suc-cess, he says, there must be a limit when acompany reaches a larger size: "Culturesof innovation doesn't mean that everybodygest to reinvent the wheel six times. Theneed for a certain level of persistence andtenacity is I think a surprisingly importantpart of innovation." And when it comes to making decisions,he'd rather not have to do it very often, butinstead thinks a leader should delegate asmuch as possible, rather than running acompany that has to come to him for everysingle one. While he does make the bigchoices, such as whether or not Microsoftwill invest with a certain company, andwill sign off on decisions that other peoplehave made, "the number of decisions thatI actually have to make myself is relativelylow," he says. In the same vein, Mr. Ballmer is not abig believer in micromanagement. Whilehe admits that he does have what he re-fers to as an "Anglo-Saxon personality" inwhich he likes to see evidence and detail inorder to feel comfortable with certain prin-ciples, he would rather as questions thatrequire discussions of detail, as opposed toblatant micromanagement. With respect to running meetings, Mr.Ballmer admits that his "brain jumpsaround too much." He prefers that thelong, presentation style of meetings thatare rife with "theater" are cut to a mini-mum and instead favors a system of re-ceiving materials in advance, which shouldlead with a summary of the meeting'smain points and allow him some time toask questions. "If I was a kid, they'd sayI have a little bit of-what do they call it?-ADD," explains. And he also runs a tight ship when itcomes to management of his time-hekeeps a detailed spreadsheet in which hebudgets his time for the year. His meetingswith customers and partners, formal meet-ings, free time, and time spent away fromSeattle are all mapped out and allocatedstrategically so that he can accomplish hisgoals and still manage to spend as muchtime as he can with his three children. And sometimes, Mr. Ballmer says, acompany should look to outside hires tospice things up and bring in new view-points. To be "dynamic," a companyshould hire internally 70 to 80% of thetime, but should bring in outsiders 20 to30% of the time, but checking referencesis key. And when he interviews people, heis looking for two things: first, passion ("It doesn't have to be bubbly, but you needto see the passion. But you always can-you can see it in the eyes," he says.), andsecond, a person with whom he can relate.He'd like an interviewee to talk with himabout something he or she is proud of, andto explain it in detail.